Northern Lights Autos: FoNz's Fabulous First Grow

Oh and, new phone which means new camera. This was a point and shoot shot. More to come later :)
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So 2 plants are finishing up super strong. About 5% Amber, I got a jewelry loop because the handheld microscope I have is simply very difficult to keep steady enough to use for really fast check-ins (when I'm busy with other things).
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Number Four (dense thick-calyx buds) is on the left here. Connie the barbarian is on the right, she is actually heavy to hold and move around. Smaller calyxes but far more of them on Connie, significantly different phenotype and aroma. She has winter color genetics which none of the other plants seem to have.

The other two plants are on the later side of mid flower but are big and hard to feed in 7 gallon pots. From my research before-hand, 7 gallon pots are pretty big for autos so I wasn't expecting them to get cramped for root space. I've been able to confirm that despite my preparations Eminem has become root bound.
To encourage her to go full-throttle into flower I am going to give her and Runty a defoliation. If I can get them happy with their accomodations long enough to get to full cloudy trichomes I'll be happy.
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Connie bottom. Eminem top, suffering from calmag despite good water, nutrients and pH. Should pick up again following defoliation, still growing well - just not as pretty as my others.

For reference, Eminem takes almost a quarter of the tent up, so ≈6.25 square feet footprint on her or ≈0.6 square meters.
 
This morning Connie and Number Four hit their Amber wave. Also Chachi is dry enough now to get a dry weight.

Starting with Number Four, day #85.
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Number Four was closer to Chachi's phenotype but out of all the plants has the most dramatic Earth and spice smells with some subtle skunk. She had much thicker colas with fat calyxes and tightly curled pistils that were far more orange by the time the amber trichomes started pupping up in force.

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Then of course there is Connie the Barbarian, an odd phenotype from the start. Her smell has distinct fruit and lemony notes as well as distinct fall/winter colors in her leaves that came out strongly even though the temperatures weren't low. I'm interested in testing her smoke, but I'm gonna wait til she is fully cured. When I saw her wet weight over a kilo my jaw just about dropped.

Finally, Chachi's dry weight. The number I using the wet to dry conversion was 3.2 oz, but I had left the entire stem on. This time I trimmed the colas a bit closer to their buds for more accurate wet weights. After drying Chachi has come out to 2 ⅞ ounces.
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Naturally all weights were with the containers zeroed out. Hopefully by trimming out more of the branches my wet/dry weight will be more accurate this time around.

(614*0.9)/4 138 g (4.87 oz) dry from Number Four estimate.
(1065*0.9)/4 = 239.6 g (8.452 oz) dry from Connie estimate.

I knew Connie was a big gal but if her wet/dry conversion is even close then she may be my largest harvest out of this grow.

There is still one going that may beat out Connie, we will watch Eminem's development and see just what kind of monstrosity (or early disappointing finisher) she can turn out to be.
 
Holy moly FoNz, your harvesting dreams man! Haha 7 ounces is my heaviest plant indoors to date.
I know, I'm kinda still processing it. I didn't think I'd have any plants that significant but it is really difficult to tell because I only have pictures to go off of, and scaling can be difficult to tell in some pictures.

I can't wait til I start my photoperiod grow to get really ridiculous plants.
 
@stoneotter you got any final dry weights from your Four Fine Fall Phillies yet? I was gonna post in your thread but you wrote such a nice conclusion post that I didn't want to ruin it :p
 
@stoneotter you got any final dry weights from your Four Fine Fall Phillies yet? I was gonna post in your thread but you wrote such a nice conclusion post that I didn't want to ruin it :p
Here's some. I'll find the rest.
I chopped the gorilla bomb first this morning. This plant grew like she didn't have a care in the world. Didn't mind the cold start, had no deficiencies I could see and grew big hard bud. I couldn't get her to conform to my wishes of putting her in scrog so I just opened her up the best I could. This was a pleasure to grow. Wet weight 734 grams. If I put it into the formula I snagged from Emilya of wet weight - 10% for stems. divided by 4 = 5.9 oz possible dry

Next came white rhino. This one deceived me the whole time. I didn't see her colas being much. They looked small and I could see through them at one point. She grew well, only asking for a little calcium addition. Also she really stopped growing when I defoliated her so I stopped and didn't touch. Wet weight 793 Grams. 6,3 oz possible dry

Strawberry Cough came down too. This plant drove me nutz the whole time. I never did make her completely happy. Best I did was keep her from dead. The ugliest I've grown to date. Calcium by the truckload and a light feeder as far as I can tell. She got dank though! My trimmers got the stickiest on her. Wet weight 781 grams. 6.3 oz possible

Sorry This isn't what you're looking for. I have that downstairs. Darn I should have had that back there. Thanks for the reminder. Next time I go down.
 
Here we go FoNz my finals for the fall phillies are:
White Rhino 6 oz
Strawberry Cough 6 oz
Gorilla Bomb 5.5 oz
CBD Cream and Cheese 4.8 oz
For a total of 22.3 oz.. A tent weight record grow for me. Thanks to this green family we have here. Yourself included. The only better news is the weight of your grow!
 
Here we go FoNz my finals for the fall phillies are:
White Rhino 6 oz
Strawberry Cough 6 oz
Gorilla Bomb 5.5 oz
CBD Cream and Cheese 4.8 oz
For a total of 22.3 oz.. A tent weight record grow for me. Thanks to this green family we have here. Yourself included. The only better news is the weight of your grow!
So far your per plant average is 5.6, I might only end up with ~24 oz or so which would be less than 5oz per plant average. So unless I get another plant with a weight like Connie then your grow is gonna come out on top! :p

Great work man!
 
So speaking of harvest, I love it when you get a nice strong hint of flavors to come for the days while your plants are drying.

Today Number Four's harvested buds have an earthy skunk aroma that is not completely out of place for northern lights.

Connie, the phenotypic odd ball, is also revealing aromas. Except there is almost no earthy smell that is so ubiquitous among northern lights strains, instead it is almost exclusively lavender with extremely subtle citrus and berry. I am going to contact the individual who sent me the seeds and see if it could have been a different autoflower strain altogether, and if so - which one?

Any guesses? We know the plant had strong red/purple pigmentation of the top most sugar and fan leaves, longer internodes than the indica dominant sisters, and an almost entirely linalool (lavender) smell.

Oddities aside, the first harvest, Chachi is dry and curing and now smells like fruit and cookies. So I am not entirely sure how unusual smell variations are in a single strain, seems like it would be genetic - but I suppose it could be epigenetic and the northern lights were all northern lights after all.

Edit: oh hello there @Virgin ground
 
:ciao:Congrats on all of your hard work coming to fruition!
I love when they surprise you with unexpected colors.

Looks like a hard choice on what to grow next. I'm the same boat. Too many types, not enough space.
 
I may be picking a sativa dominant strain to test my space management for my next grow, and see how much longer/taller they get.

Also I want some sativa bud on hand for a heady migraine stopper that doesn't glue me to the couch. :rofl:

Narrows it down to:
Super Silver Haze,
Bruce Banner or
Amnesia

Might try Bruce Banner since it was a recommendation previously and it fits my target profile.
 
Chris has a really nice Amnesia growing right now. He said that she is a pretty stellar strain.
Any of them would be a great choice.... Therein lies the problem. Lol.
I'm sure you'll make the right choice.
 
I've got a question for @Emilya when she's around. Trying to decide how to recycle my soil, it should still be rich enough to start a new grow. What I was wondering if I should remove and discard the roots or if there would be some value in grinding the roots and adding them in as a soil amendment?

I spent much time and effort taking care of the root mass and making sure it was cultured with beneficial bacterias and fungus, do you think the ground root could actually jump start new root development?

I'm not against experimenting with it if we don't have it documented being done.
 
Great job on the growing-beautiful plants and a substantial harvest:bravo:
-Northern Lights has been a favorite of mine since my son turned me on to some
a few years ago,and I finally got off my cheap ass and ordered some seeds....After I ordered them I kicked myself for not ordering autos,and after seeing yours,I'm kicking myself all over again...Great Job,FoNz !
 
I've got a question for @Emilya when she's around. Trying to decide how to recycle my soil, it should still be rich enough to start a new grow. What I was wondering if I should remove and discard the roots or if there would be some value in grinding the roots and adding them in as a soil amendment?

I spent much time and effort taking care of the root mass and making sure it was cultured with beneficial bacterias and fungus, do you think the ground root could actually jump start new root development?

I'm not against experimenting with it if we don't have it documented being done.
Look up "no till" and see that people do this all the time. If I run a 7 gal container or larger I know good and well that all the layers and spikes and other goodness that I packed into that soil are still there and plenty of raw materials are left over after one plant's attempts to use them all. I will run a container like this twice, almost every time, and I notice no loss of quality in the second run as a result. I simply pull the main center mass of the rootball out of the container and transplant the next one into that hole.
The root mass that I pull out gets cut up and added back to my compost bin to become part of the next soil. The roots that are left in the container will decompose and all of the microbes and fungi surrounding them migrate naturally over to the living roots being introduced to the system. There really is no downside to doing this, keeping in mind that it wont work in a smaller container where the soil actually has been depleted in the last run.
 
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